I also have a 2.35/2.39/CIH screen. Here is what I did, which of course will not work for everyone. I ripped the DKR Blu-Ray to a MKV and then loaded it into Handbrake (kept the DTS-MA soundtrack and PGS subs) and then used Handbrake's cropping feature to reframe all of the movie to 2.39:1 dimensions (1920 x 800). The movie is defiantly protected for 2.39 and even looks great in it. So now I have the IMAX and 2.39 version, one for my LCD and the other for my projector. Hopefully, these examples will show:

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Can you share what settings you used in Handbrake? (or export as a profile and share?)

Watching the DVD and the Blu-ray at the same time, and although [PDB] claims that it was shot with the awareness of needing to crop the top and bottom, it's not necessarily always the very top and very bottom that they cut off. In fact, sometimes it seems like they don't cut off any top and cut off twice the bottom, if that makes sense.

I wonder how imperfect it is if we cut off top and bottom exactly. Can you show me more shots on your 2.39:1 version please? Like the leer jets flying around the edges of Gotham or something like that?

Watching the DVD and the Blu-ray at the same time, and although [PDB] claims that it was shot with the awareness of needing to crop the top and bottom, it's not necessarily always the very top and very bottom that they cut off. In fact, sometimes it seems like they don't cut off any top and cut off twice the bottom, if that makes sense.
I wonder how imperfect it is if we cut off top and bottom exactly. Can you show me more shots on your 2.39:1 version please? Like the leer jets flying around the edges of Gotham or something like that?
Thanks.

My daughter watched the dubbed version and yes it's the same. What I did notice when I heard their voices (I didn't watch it cause I despise dubbed movies, but I heard as she was watching) was that some of them ARE from the french dubbing (Marion Cotillard is doing her own voice, Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Anne Hathaway also have " true french" voices - not sure about Bane, though they really pushed it on the pitch shift!!), while the others are the same 10 people doing the french canadian voices - except for Alfred they all sounded as usual: dull, no emotion, sometimes you even wonder if these guys are really actors... ....That's strange, I'm not surprised about Marion Cotillard, after all she is french and somewhere in her contract she might have mentioned that she would be doing her own voice for all french speaking parts of the world, not just France, Jodie Foster does it too; but why the others? I know very well who does what for which country in terms of french dubbing, and I was surprised they actually had a bit of both this time - since Quebec is usually very proud of its crappy "international french" as opposed to "parisian french"...

...For wat it's worth, you should definitely watch it in english with french subtitles instead...

Unlike with TDK, I didn't mind the changing OAR a great deal.
Don't know why....maybe because there is so much more of it?
Anyway, it is a non-issue with TDKR as far as I am concerned.

I assume you are using a 1.78 screen Oink? I would have been OK with the variable aspect viewing on a screen this was intended for which 1.78 is, but this variable aspect nonsense on a 2.35 screen doing the zoom method is terrible and very distracting since the frame opens up and spills all over your screen wall and/or ceiling.

Having said the above, I just recently added a VP to my setup which has plenty of masking support to deal with variable aspect. HUGE difference as far as the presentation goes on a scope screen once you can frame the entire movie for constant aspect. I am sure others will be happy as well as they dont have to see my posts bitching about this anymore with each new variable aspect film that hits.

Assuming you haven't shifted any images, your Blu-ray should have black bars which are probably nearly cutting off these jets. That's not certain, but it certainly won't be centered.
I also noticed IMAX shots that helped center people's faces more on the DVD as well. If you want more time frames, I'd like to see what they look like.

Here you go, it is definitely different framing but you can see the jets fine. Also, I was going on an interview I read somewhere, maybe American Cinematographer, that Pfister protected the center of the frame for the 35mm extract. That's not to say that they didn't tilt up or down but I have watched a center extract twice and nothing screams trouble to me. Otherwise you are going to have to choose the framing for each scene like dvdmike is doing, using the dvd as a guide.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. That's why I want to provide him with more frames.
Thanks for that example, though! How is it you did all of this again? Is all of the software you said you used free to download?

Well I rip all my blu-rays/DVDs to mkvs or ISOs and then store them on a server to send to my dune or htpc so I had this ripped as an ISO already. There are a bunch of programs that can rip blu-rays but I don't know if it is cool to talk about them on avs. I just took the main feature m2ts file, loaded it into handbrake, used handbrakes cropping/letterbox feature and cropped based off the 2.39 scenes in the movie. That basically gives you a center slice through the entire film. Ran the preview to make sure it is ok and then set the bitrate to match the blu-ray. I don't have the crop factor I used since it is at a computer at work but I can post it next time I'm there. The new version of handbrake allows you to pass-through the dts-ma soundtrack otherwise you can demux the m2ts file and mux the video in mkvmerge with the dts-ma soundtrack.

This is the fastest method I found, takes about 3-4 hours on a mid level computer to complete. I could crop the IMAX frames higher like the DVD but that would screw up the 2.39 frames. The only way around is to crop the IMAX scenes higher to the DVD framing then combine those with the regular 2.39 scenes in a NLE like premier or final cut. That is assuming that all the IMAX scenes were cropped the same which might not be the case giving your findings. If all the IMAX frames were cropped down to 2.39 differently per scene then you have to do what dvdmike is doing and frame the entire film science by scene. Something I'm not going to do since I'm ok with the center cut.

Can you give me some scenes with headshots to check? I can see how bad the cropping is.

Sorry to bother you but.. Are you back yet? or are you still traveling?

I've spoken with him a few times since. We're trying to figure it out to get it playable on a BD. There are some underlying issues going on with a 1920x800 resolution as well as getting lossless on the disc, among other things (I'm having other external issues that you probably won't have).

Sorry I forgot all about this thread once it rolled off the first page. I was working with muffinmcfluffin on all the steps so I'm just going to reprint what I wrote to him. The goal of this was to get a MKV or a Blu-ray using free software. Any NLE would make this a lot easier but would cost a lot more money. The MKV works fine but we are still working on the Blu-ray. So you need to rip the main movie off the disc to a mkv or m2ts. So you should have a MKV or m2ts about 35 GB in size.

Open Handbrake. Click on Source and File and open the MKV/m2ts that you created. The profile on the left should be regular/normal. On the Output Setting pull down select MKV. Under Destination create the name/path of the new file. On the Picture tab under Size go to the anamorphic pull-down and select none. Set the width to 1920 and the Height to 800 (this will give you 2.40 aspect ratio). Under Cropping set the Top and Bottom to 140. All of this will give you a center 2.40 aspect ratio that matches the 35mm scenes.

In Handbrake select the Video tab. Leave the codec as h.264 and Framerate as same as source. Click on Avg Bitrate and enter 26000 (26000 kbps) which is roughly the same bitrate as the original Blu-ray. (If you are making a Blu-ray this will require a 50 GB disc. If you want to use a 25 GB disc set the bitrate to 15000). Check 2-Pass Encoding and Turbo first Pass. Use Constant framerate unlike in this picture.

Select the audio tab. The default audio source should be the Engligh DTS-HD MA soundtrack. On the drop down next to it select DTS-HD Passthrough

Click start. This will take a few hours. You should now have a 1920x800/ 2.39 MKV.

That is for the MKV. To convert that MKV to a Blu-ray, muffinmcfluffin and myself are still working the bugs out. I have a 25GB blu-ray that is cropped but for some reason the DTS-HD MA soundtrack is not working (mediainfo show it is there) so I need to track down where it is getting stripped. If anyone wants the instructions to convert it to a Blu-ray, let me know.

Also this will work for the Dark Knight but handbrake does not have a DolbyTrue passthrough. In that case you have to demux the Dolby True and remux it back using MKVmerge.

Why not just relegate yourself to a CIH version of the film? Virtually all digital editions of TDK outside the actual BD - streaming, download, VOD - were straight 2.40:1 and TDKR is guaranteed to be the same. VUDU HDX would be the best bet. Not quite blu-ray but full 1080p + dolby digital plus.

if this is true, then this is GREAT NEWS! have to get up on this, as I'm planning to have a CIH setup in the coming months...